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Thanks are due to our member Cliff Ford who kindly produced these meeting reports.
September 2016. Early Victorian farming in North Devon. John Bradbeer.
John began his talk by comparing the 14th century farming with Victorian farming. He pointed out that early farmers would have been surprised at the amount of cultivated land in Victorian times and the beginning of mechanisation. They would also have noticed that cattle were much larger due to the improved breeding programmes.
In 1836 the Commutation of Tithes Acts was brought in, the tithe being a payment in kind (originally one tenth) of the harvest for the benefit of the church. The tithe apportionment was a listing of all parcels of land with ownership, etc.. Parliament then laid down categories of land use such as arable, meadow, pasture, etc.. The process took place with a surveyor and valuer who mapped parish lands and drew up an allocation of tithe.
We were shown a detailed sample of charts and maps which were very interesting, but too many to list here. The talk was of special interest to members local to the area.
October 2016. Braddicks of Bideford - continued. Sharon Snell.
Sharon began by giving us a short recap of her previous talk and then went on to part two of the Braddicks family.
Her grandfather Leslie Grange Hookay was a more refined character than his father Hobart who left school at 14 and trained as a carpenter. Hobart loved sports such as cricket, football and golf. He was rather a lad about town and enjoyed cigars and whisky! He improved the business by sourcing furniture from further afield to appeal to a wider clientele and became quite a wealthy man. He met his wife Sylvia on the golf course and married her in 1931. He introduced hire purchase to Braddicks which was a novelty in those days and this also increased the company turnover. During WW2 he was a fireman.
Leslie Hookay opened the Elizabethan Restaurant in Westward Ho! in 1951 and was now very much involved in the running of the company. In the 1960’s the Westward Ho! camping and caravanning became more prominent and was well catered for by the family.
November 2016. Devon dialect. Iris Wood.
Iris began by donning an old sack apron and jamming a straw hat on her head. We knew we were in for a fun time! She uttered several sentences in broad Devon which to some of us outsiders sounded like a foreign language. Iris explained that unless the Devon dialect is spoken more often it would die out. She said it is a beautiful and soft dialect, not unlike Devonshire scenery. Examples of just a few Devon words were “apple drain” when a wasp has eaten the inside of an apple and left just the outer skin, and one I particularly liked was “flittermouse” meaning a bat (the flying variety), and one more I can squeeze in, “grass qualing” meaning harvesting. There were many more, but too many to list here.
Iris finished with a poem where the last line of each verse was “with a piece of binder string”, which we all joined in reciting. I said at the beginning about having a fun time and we certainly all had that!
January 2017. History of Quickes Cheese. Stuart Dowle.
This was the talk we were looking forward to with the hope of some cheese nibbles and we were not disappointed at the end of the talk!
Stuart’s talk was very interesting and explained how Quickes Cheese was formed, located at Newton St Cyres in a 300 acre estate, 150 acres of which are woodland.
The cheese making is all done by hand and quite a complex process, too detailed to go into here. If anyone is interested then guided tours are available. The 350 cows have been bred over the years from a Kiwi Friesian, a Swedish Red, Montbeliarde and Jersey mix to produce the perfect milk for cheese making. Getting back to the cheese tasting we were spoilt for choice with a selection of mature, smoked, vintage and ewes milk cheese, but unfortunately no goats cheese. After finishing tasting we were able to select and purchase our preferences. Thanks to Stuart we had an informative and amusing talk appreciated by all.
February 2017. “Fever”, a story from a North Devon churchyard. Liz Shakespeare.
Liz gave us a talk some time ago and we looked forward to this one which was centred around Littleham and its churchyard.
Liz brought with her several of her books, “The Memory Be Green”, “All Around The Year”, “The Turning Of The Tide” and the subject of her talk, “Fever”.
Her interest was aroused when on one of her frequent walks in the churchyard she noticed a gravestone with the date 1871 and the sad inscription concerning a father and his three children who had all died at a young age. This made her curious why they and several others had died in that year. The Registers were still held at the church and after obtaining them for research she was led to consulting maps and other documents of the surrounding area. It became apparent that scarlet fever was the culprit, caused by poor hygiene and open sewers, spread rapidly as the poor people could not afford a doctor.
Liz read several sections from her book and was thanked by us all for a very interesting evening.
March 2017. North Devon Savages. Peter Christie.
This was a fascinating story which concerned a family living in the North Devon village of Nymet Rowland in the 1870’s. The family’s name was Cheriton with Christopher Cheriton as the family’s head. They lived in primitive conditions with a lifestyle that caused national outrage.
Although their behaviour was extreme the Cheritons did have some defenders, in particular the Reverend T.J. Leslie from Appledore. He wrote several letters to The North Devon Journal pointing out that many of the anonymous accusations were false and that the Cheriton’s attended church. He argued the possibility that rich farmers wanted the family out of the parish and could easily persuade journalists to “interview” a poor family.
Many of their crimes were small, such as poaching, which upset the landowners. However, many of the cases were dismissed.
Peter showed us Cheriton family trees he had researched over the years which highlighted the number of illegitimate children in the family.
This was a very interesting talk which I cannot give justice to in this short review. For those interested, Peter has written several books concerning the family.
April 2017. Story of Welcombe, the first PYO fruit farm in North Devon. Peter Barnes.
Peter illustrated the talk with various photos of the family which made it very interesting.
In about 1951 Grete Morris (a former Miss Oslo) married an Anglo-Irish Guards Officer, Brian Barnes (Peter’s father), and settled into army life. In March 1972 they bought a smallholding of 19 acres in High Bickington with a farmhouse built in 1922. Peter’s father fully retired from the army in March 1973 and soon after they planted raspberries and strawberries. By September of that year they had planted a further 6,750 strawberries, making a total of 10,000 plants. The farm expanded to include redcurrants and gooseberries. Fruit trees including apple and cherry were planted, totalling 212 trees.
Peter’s father also grew tobacco for his own use until 1978 when his GP advised him to give it up for health reasons.
By 1980 Peter had decided not to make farming his career which caused some problems for his family. The farm was eventually sold in 1983 and became a sheep farm. It was sold several times more and is now in the hands of Stella Burrows. Peter has produced a book, “The Story of Welcombe”.